From luxury bunkers to tactical vehicles, the ultra-rich are preparing for the Big One

In December, Wired magaz‐ ine revealed that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta and one of the richest indi‐ viduals on the planet, was building a $100-million US compound in Hawaii.

The fact that Zuckerberg is undertaking a nine-figure renovation is hardly revela‐ tory. The more telling detail is that the compound includes a bunker - 5,000 square feet, to be specific, with concrete walls and an escape hatch.

What does this tell us? It's a sign that at least some of the ultra-rich are anxious about global events and are making contingency plans for the Big One - whatever form that may take.

The feeling is very much in the air. Architectural Digest named "luxury bunkers" one of the real estate trends of 2023, and a finely appointed redoubt figured prominently in the recent Netflix thriller Leave the World Behind.

Brian Cramden, president of Hardened Structures, a Virginia-based firm that builds multimillion-dollar for‐ tified homes and bomb shel‐ ters, said work has been "steady" for years but that he has seen a "major uptick in the last two, three months."

"With Putin and North Ko‐ rea and what's going on in Gaza, I'm getting lots of in‐ quiries," he said. "It's [wars], it's Trump, it's the divisive‐ ness of the nation."

Cramden said the most commonly cited threats in‐ clude a breakdown of law and order; the detonation of a nuclear weapon; a hostile power activating an electro‐ magnetic pulse (EMP) to dis‐ rupt the communications network; and the diffuse ef‐ fects of climate change.

Vivos, a California-based company that provides "shel‐ ter solutions," told CBC "in‐ quiries and applications are up over 2,000 per cent year over year."

A history of taking shel‐ ter

The concept of a bunker goes back to antiquity. It was a place where someone could store precious belongings away from "warring factions and social unrest, but also the environment," said Bradley Garrett, a cultural ge‐ ographer based in California and the author of Bunker: Building for the End Times.

He said the notion of a shelter as an architectural form started to emerge dur‐ ing the Second World War. As the Cold War evolved, gov‐ ernments dug deep under‐ ground to build increasingly elaborate bunkers. Some, like Canada's famed Diefen‐ bunker, were meant to pro‐ tect political elites, but in many cases they were inten‐ ded to house ordinary citi‐ zens in the case of an attack.

WATCH | A tour of the Diefenbunker:

Sure, middle-class "prep‐ pers" also built shelters in their backyards, but they couldn't match the scale and grandeur of those statesponsored projects. That changed in the early 2000s, said Garrett, when more ex‐ pansive private bunkers started to proliferate.

He believes it's the result of two factors: the end of the Cold War and the runaway wealth of the world's elite.

"You've got a lot of people with incredible amounts of money who are now capable of buying those bunkers that were built by governments," he said.

Companies like Hardened Structures and Vivos handle all aspects of the construc‐ tion, from the architectural design to the engineering, which typically means mak‐ ing it blast-resistant, airtight, difficult for invaders to breach and capable of gener‐ ating its own power.

Garrett said the most elaborate bunker he found while researching his book is the Survival Condo, located in a former missile silo in Kansas. Built around 2010 by a property developer who used to work for the U.S. De‐ partment of Defence, this "nuclear-hardened" structure features walls up to 2¾ me‐ tres thick and can house be‐ tween 36 and 75 people.

In addition to providing each unit with a five-year supply of "freeze-dried and dehydrated survival food," the complex contains an in‐ door pool, a classroom, a li‐ brary and two floors of hy‐ droponic gardens to "provide fresh produce." It also has fil‐ tered air and water supplies. Units go for between $1.5 million and $3 million.

A privileged clientele

That's fairly cheap compared to the offerings of Swissbased Oppidum, which spe‐ cializes in building "ultra-lux‐ ury fortified underground residences" anywhere in the world. It has a number of swishy options, including Model D'Heritage ("the ulti‐ mate bespoke sanctuary"), a five-bedroom unit that's 12,000 square feet, includes a pool and home theatre and starts at $60 million US.

WATCH | A promotional video for Oppidum's luxury bunkers:

Tom Grmela, the compa‐ ny's head of communica‐ tions, told CBC News "Op‐ pidum's luxury bunkers are not just about survival. They are about maintaining a qual‐ ity of life and peace of mind in any circumstance."

Camden said Hardened Structures has become so busy that the company passes on projects of less than $1 million US. It has been involved in projects around the world, including a $90-million bunker in the Middle East and a 100-per‐ son shelter in the Canadian Rockies - but that's about as specific, geographically, as he will get.

"One of the tenets of shel‐ ter design is you don't want anyone to know about it," he said.

Client confidentiality for these companies can be so intense that the builders typi‐ cally only meet with interme‐ diaries such as lawyers.

"Rarely do I ever actually meet the billionaire client," Cramden said. "And even when you do, they always have aliases."

'Dread merchants'

In the interests of security, the rich are not only in‐ vesting in subterranean housing, but they're also buy‐ ing military-grade vehicles that look like variations of the Batmobile.

Rezvani Motors - another California-based company produces a fleet of "tactical urban vehicles," including the Vengeance, a muscular SUV with seating for seven and "optional bulletproof pack‐ age." It starts at $285,000 US. NFL wide receiver Tamari Cooper has one.

Rezvani's Hercules 6x6 Military Edition has six wheels, as well as safety fea‐ tures such as on-board gas masks, electrified door han‐ dles and "underside explo‐ sive protection." That will cost you $459,000 US.

"Having security features on a car is something that gives a lot of my clients peace of mind," said Cynthia Karimi, head of public rela‐ tions and client relations at Rezvani Motors, who would‐ n't reveal how many vehicles the company sells in a year. Her clients "have the re‐ sources to give themselves an additional element of pro‐ tection in their lives," she said, noting "these are the same people, sometimes, who also have bunkers."

While he admits to having a fascination with this type of end-days planning, Garrett is concerned "when the bunker becomes a business proposi‐ tion." In the book, he calls these companies "dread mer‐ chants."

WATCH | A promo video for Vivos's Europa One bunker complex:

"It's not just the space that they're selling, it's the narrative that they're selling," he said. "It's in the interest of these bunker builders … to sell you a story about how horrible things are and about how the world is falling apart and so that you'll buy into their scheme."

Grmela sees it differently. Oppidum's "clients are for‐ ward-thinking individuals who understand the value of preparedness in an unpre‐ dictable world," and spend‐ ing millions on a luxury fal‐ lout shelter "reflects a broad‐ er trend among ultra-highnet-worth individuals to‐ wards prioritizing security and resilience in their per‐ sonal and financial planning strategies."

Individual protection

While the rich may have the resources, they can't predict the future. They can only an‐ ticipate the challenges.

In a 2022 piece for the Guardian, technology pundit

Douglas Rushkoff talked about attending a highly se‐ cretive gathering with ultrawealthy people who wanted to pick his brain about how to prepare for "the event." They peppered him with questions not only about shelters, but also the wisdom of acquiring mercenary armies and where on Earth they were likely to be most safe.

His conclusion: "Their ex‐ treme wealth and privilege served only to make them obsessed with insulating themselves from the very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic and resource deple‐ tion. For them, the future of technology is about only one thing: escape from the rest of us."

As Garrett points out, col‐ laboration is likely to be the winning strategy in any postapocalyptic scenario.

"Community is really im‐ portant, because no one per‐ son can have all the skills that you need to be able to survive an event," he said.

"Think about locking yourself in a bunker for three years, let's say.… There's some terrible event happen‐ ing outside and you get a tooth infection. I mean, un‐ less you're a dentist, the like‐ lihood that you can solve that problem is extremely low."

Vivos addresses this with its xPoint compound in South Dakota, which is a bunker community of 575 units built on a former U.S. military base.

"Vivos is not merely about concrete, steel and blast doors. It is about having a backup plan for mankind to survive and for families to have the opportunity to po‐ tentially be part of a like-min‐ ded community as these events unfold," said Dante Vicino, director of operations at Vivos xPoint, in an email to CBC.

This is a more recent de‐ velopment, said Garrett.

"You see people now building these bunker com‐ munities, where their goal is to get people that have com‐ plementary skills to move in with each other," he said.

"There's a kind of match‐ making process that I find to‐ tally fascinating."